You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.
—1 Corinthians 7:23
This means do not become the bondservant or slave of the theories of men, the creeds of men.
Man here means the man who walks in the senses.
You crown Jesus as the Lord of your life.
There is no other bondage but the bondage of love.
Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. (John 8:36)
You are free from Satan’s dominion. You are a new creation, a child of God.
You have been redeemed from the hand of your enemy.
You are to take this fact seriously. You are to order your life accordingly.
“Sin shall not have dominion over you” (Romans 6:14). Satan was defeated by your Master. That defeat stripped him of his ability to take you captive without your cooperation.
The two phases of Christ’s ministry in redemption are: Jesus paying the price of your redemption; and defeating your enemy and setting you free.
Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:15)
Jesus triumphed over the adversary. His triumph was your triumph. He defeated the enemy for you.
That battle was your battle.
He was not fighting for Himself.
Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. (Hebrews 2:14)
He set you free. You are free. You are redeemed by God Himself.
A NEW CREATION
Next I want you to notice that you are a new creation. This truth has never been given its place.
All we have been taught was that God forgave us our sins and that by a second work of grace, sin was eradicated from us.
But if we did wrong ignorantly or intelligently, we had to be justified again.
That justification permitted us to be justified with the devil’s nature in us.
Another view is that God was unable to take out Satan’s nature when He gave us His nature.
So that when we were born again, we had God’s nature and the devil’s nature in us. We warred against the devil’s nature in us.
They said we would be free when we died. Satan is the author of death. That would make Satan your savior. Far be the thought!
All of these teachings belong to sense knowledge’s interpretation of the Word.
Spiritual things are spiritually understood.
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)
The first thing that is given to you after redemption is a new creation.
This Scripture must ever stand as the key to this wonderful truth:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2 Corinthians 5:17–19)
You are a new creation.
The devil’s nature has been taken out of you.
God’s nature has taken its place. You are reconciled to the Father. You are brought into fellowship with the Father. Everything you were stopped being.
All you were in Satan stopped being.
The old things of weakness and failure are passed. This new creation has no memory of a past creation. You are newly born.
You are a new species.
You are a new creation created in Christ Jesus.
The Jew was blood covered because his nature was antagonistic toward God.
We are not blood covered. We are made new creations. We are cleansed by the blood. We need not be covered.
We can stand uncovered—free from sin consciousness in His presence just as Jesus did in His earth walk.
The Holy Spirit has given birth to us. We are born of God.
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. (James 1:18)
You are of God, little children. (1 John 4:4)
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:10)
All of this drives us to the conclusion that this new creation is something that God Himself has wrought out and that we are now just what He says we are: the very sons of God.
The man of sin is done away with in the new creation.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (Romans 6:6)
The sin nature is gone.
So many of us have tried to get rid of this old nature.
We did not know that it was put away.
The thing called the Adamic nature is spiritual death, which had possession of our spirits.
When we are made alive, made new creations, that nature is done away.
We are tempted, and in our babyhood state, we do foolish things. That is because our bodies have never been brought into subject to our spirits.
Sin may dwell in your physical body, but it is not sin until you have consented to an act.
There is nothing wrong in your body.
Sin may lurk in your body like a demon. If there is a demon in your flesh that means your body is filled with pain and inflammation.
When that demon is cast out, your body becomes clean and healed. Sin abides in your spirit and in your mind. It does not abide in your body.
When we refer to “sin in the flesh,” this means sin in the senses. It is when your senses have gained the dominion over your body.
God desires “that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God” (Romans 12:1). He desires that these bodies shall be dedicated to Him after we are born again.
It is an unseemly thing for your body to rule your mind and your spirit.
You know that if you have a sore foot, that foot rules all the rest of the body.
That disease has gained the mastery so that your spirit and your mind become absolute slaves to the pain in that foot.
The same thing is true if you have an unclean appetite, a habit. That habit gains the mastery over your whole body, if you do not hold it in subjection.
The thing you say to that foot is this: “By His stripes, you are healed. In the name of Jesus, become well.” (See Isaiah 53:5.)
You say to the habit that has gained the mastery over your body and mind, “You have no right to hold dominion over me any longer. In the name of Jesus Christ, depart.”
You will be free.
There is only one place for sin to actually reside and that is in our spirits.
Our spirits have been recreated. The sin nature has been taken out.
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. (1 John 3:14)
Satan’s nature is gone. God’s nature is in us. This new creation is of God. We know that we are His own.
Nothing will cripple one so quickly as to deny this truth. Nothing will establish you and build your faith as quickly as to confess it.
Confess it in your heart first.
Confess it out loud in your room. Say it over and over again: “I am a child of God. I have God’s nature. I am the righteousness of God in Christ.”
Say it until the words become familiar with your spirit.
Say it until your spirit and your words agree, until your whole being swings into harmony and into line with the Word of God.
That miraculous passage in Hebrews 5:13 says, “For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.”
They have never sounded the depths of righteousness.
They do not know what it means to be the righteousness of God in Christ.
They do not know what it means to have God justify them and to have a standing with the Father just like Jesus’s standing.
They do not seem to grasp the significance of the reality of the new creation.
That new creation is a part of God. It has partaken of God’s nature. It has been made out of righteousness and holiness of truth. The new creation is not a man-made thing.
It is not a mental thing. It is a thing of God.
Just as the angel said, “That Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35), the Holy Spirit has given birth to you and you are the holy ones of God.
You are that separated thing that belongs absolutely to the Father.
You are now His very child.
You can say, “My Father.” He whispers, “My child.”
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” (Romans 8:15)
It is your continual confession of your relationship to Him and His to you that will build faith into you.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)
God is your Father, your protector, your caretaker, and your Lord.
You are in His family. Take your place. Play the part of a son.